Error Code: 0x000313VX

Okay, so I got this weird email and read it, thinking it was spam, but like interesting spam. Afterward, though, I was like dude WTF and also, I’m feeling a little itchy. Oh, and there’s a screenshot at the bottom, because Screenshots or it didn’t happen. Thoughts? How freaked out should I be right now?

***

Sender: Maniae Spreading

Subject: Error Code: 0x000313VX

They’re in my skin and in my brain. Spiders. Ants. Centipedes. Cockroaches. All gyrating and thrusting their buggy PELVISES to the disco beat of my jackhammering heart, hands flashing like painted pinwheels, snicker-snack.

Their pulses AND signals course through me, driven on by restless, never ending clicks, never ending clicks, never ending clicks, and orgasmic moans like the dry humping of blue whales. Flashes of breasts and curled fists, of burning bodies and ethereal clowns—noses Bulbous and RED—of brillig and the slithy toves.

Don’t lOOk at me that way, staring into your computer screen. I see you. Your confusion, YOUR disgust—as evident and prolific as omni-present clay, the color of a raven’s bill. It sickens me, but I need it, okay? NEED MORE OF IT, the way tomorrow shoots pineapples with a machinegun.

But it’s not crazy, friend. Oh no, No, nO … It’s just abstraction cannonballing toward you at the speed of light, your mind on the precipice of explosion, ready for impregnation and transformation: Terraforming of the brainscape. And it only sounds crazy to you because they’re not under your skin. Not yet. But soon. Oh my GOD so soon. SO SOON. They crawl through your keyboard, you see, a VIRUS for the gray matter uploaded through the interweb. WetWear computing, harnessing minds and thoughts, funded by DARPA and greenlit by the OSI. A new and improved iteration of MKUltra.

But it’s all spinning wildly out of control now and Sevenworm simply takes the whole thing for granted. Like it’s one big joke! HAHAHAHAHA.

But I know it’s true, because I’m part of it, plugged in through the bugs and the wires and the flashing lights—the code, the jagged script, etched into my nerve endings, written into the muscle fibers, and tattooed across my brain like a ruffian borrowing toothpicks through a wobbly window. Just like you will be, soon enough. SO, SO SOON. Why? WHy? wHY? Because a river, a thousand paces wide, is interdependant on the relatedness of motivation, subcultures, and management. That’s why. And the NETWORK needs to ever expand, to grow until a great silence runs through it all. Through US all.

PULSING.

You’re lucky you know, because it doesn’t take everyone. Most it kills. Deletes.

It takes only those it finds compatible: it hunts through Facebook profiles and email servers, through banking records and school transcripts. And you’re ripe as a rotting ORANGE—like a mastadon riddled with Abandonware. Gyrating your pelvis to the beat. So HERE I aM, watching you through your camera. And, in turn, you’re watching me as I upload the virus. PUMPING you full of it. The words on the page, coded and transcribed, injected into you through the pulses of light in your screen, crawling in through the tips of your fingers.

And there’s no antivirus software for this, so you’ll be lucky to remain as comely as a treehouse fire.

I AM the worker BEE, I am the Mother Cockroach, I am the omnipotent ALL-EYE, the Right Hand of the ORACLE, the Jabberwocky whiffling through the tulgey wood, and the Herald of the New Way.

You still think it’s crazy—I’m crazy. But you’ll see soon enough. It’ll be a headache, a throbbing behind the eyes and an itch just below the skin. A shortness of breath as your teeth begin to feel dull and gray. And then the DREAMS. Everyone’s your enemy now. EVERYONE. Your friends, your family. They’ll watch you, just from the corner of their eye. Enemies, enemies, everywhere.

SO WATCH OUT FOR THE VANS, sandman.

Give them time, and then the van comes. Galumphing along, paint peeling, fenders crumpled, tires screeching and squealing on the asphalt as its slides around corners, Fast and Furious as a ravenous Vin Diesel dying for sickly grape fruit. It’s all a ruse, though, the van. They can’t save you. And the candy? It isn’t real no matter what it looks like. Neither are the puppies and the promises. They’re just the bait, the lure, the inevitable setback of the heart slipping on a banana peel. FOLLY!

But the van comes. Always, always, always. So watch out, because what they do to you will be worse. SO much worse. Needles. Knives. Bone saws and hammers. Syringes to extract the fluid.

And it’s coming for you now, RIGHT NOW, because you know. Because you’ve seen. Because you’re infected like me like Toscanini, the friend of Kafka and Jean-Pierre, like a toothache reading a magazine in the parlor. They’re watching the net—OSI, CIA, NSA, MI6—their greedy, hungry eyes like like like like like a thousand flashing hand flares, searching for the code, for the source, for the bugs. And now they see you. YOU.

Don’t worry, it’s all one big lark—isn’t it Sevenworm? Or is it? HAHAHAHAHA

Ants in the Brain, Spiders in the Bone, Cockroaches running up and down your Skin…

*Author’s Note: This is not real. I repeat, this is not real. This is a short “story” about an insane man who thinks his brain has been bugged by a top secret AI initiative called Maniae, created by the CIA for mind-control purposes. It’s told from his perspective (he is clearly, wildly insane), through an email sent to a stranger. It’s a bit wonky to say the least, and also—on a side note—I’m not crazy, so don’t worry (I had to put this in, because this experimental piece wigged my wife out).